It's Probably Our Fault

Some users are timid about submitting bugs. They might think
that they "did" something to the program to cause it to
misbehave. Don't be afraid! It probably is a bug, and if
it's not that's ok too. In particular, the following are
almost certainly signs of a bug:

Other, less drastic but "weird" behavior could still be a bug. In
particular, if a preferences-option doesn't do what it's supposed to
do, a window doesn't act like it ought to, these are probably also
bugs.

We regret that for now, this login is separate
and distinct from the one used on ardour.org.

Creating an account is easy and only requires a valid email
address. Once you create your account, a password will be
mailed to the email address you specified (it may sometimes
take a while for get this email - the system where the
tracker runs sometimes gets backed up sending outbound
email). You only need to create an account once, and you can
use it from then on out to report as many bugs as you can
find.

Once you receive the password, you can enter a new bug report (new
window). Be sure to add as many details as possible: if there's too
few to reproduce the bug, it will be closed (no, we cannot read your
mind!).

After you've submitted a bug, you can always go back and add more
details. To do this, just go to Mantis's "Open and reported by me"
link on the first page. You can then go into your bug and add
additional "bugnotes". It is important to understand that when the bug
is related to a particular session (i.e. it doesn't happen on other
sessions), we need to get a copy of the session to be able to work on
the bug: the conditions causing the bug may be very specific to your
session - and recreating a similar session from a description is
beyond what we can spend resources on.

Crashing Bugs

Bugs that crash Ardour are generally considered extremely serious and
receive first priority in the queue (unless they are caused by things
outside our control, in which case we try to document causes and
workarounds). However, one of the problems with such bugs is that its
often hard for developers to reproduce them, and so its important that
you supply as much information as possible.

OS X Specific Information

If Ardour crashes and
produces a crash report, then you should attach the contents of the
crash log to your bug report as an attachment (or paste it directly
into the "More Information" field).

But I Don't Have a Crash Report!

Most OS X systems are configured with the system crash reporter
enabled. However, most modern OS X systems do not tend to show the
crash log by default. If Ardour crashes on your system and you not get
a report about it, open the Console (Applications > Utilities >
Console) and look near the end of its contents. You will
almost certainly see a line or two that mention the crash and the
location of the crash log file.

Linux Specific Information

If you are reasonably comfortable dealing with the technical side of
computers, you
could help us debug ardour. Otherwise,
just submit a bug report and consider hanging out on our IRC channel
in case we need more information from you.

What Should I Expect Afterwards?

Bugs generally move through the following stages:

New

this means that it's in Mantis, but nobody has done anything with it (except perhaps read it)

Acknowledged

often, a new bug will become acknowledged just to that we can tell
you that we've seen it and are looking into it. Sometimes, this stage
will be skipped.

Feedback

This means that we need more information from you (or other people) about the bug you've reported.

Assigned

This means that someone has taken on the responsibility of
fixing this particular bug. No time frame for a fix is implied by a
bug entering this stage.

Resolved

This means that the developer who worked on the fix believes
that the problem is solved. Bugs remain in state once they enter it,
right up until you, the reporter of the bug, mark them ...

Closed

This means that the bug reporter (you) has confirmed that the bug
is fixed. In general, we rely on reporters to close bugs they
reported. You can do this at any time, which can be useful if a new
version of Ardour fixes the bug as a side-effect without any
developer explicitly attempting to fix the bug. Just mark it closed
if this happens, with a note on what happened.

You will generally receive email notifying you of any change in a bug's status, or when any new bugnotes are added to the bug.

How Long?

The time it takes for a bug to be fixed is largely dependent on how
elusive the bug is. In general, you should receive some form of
acknowledgement that your bug has been received.

In particular, if you included instructions on how to repeat the bug
(recommended), then you will likely get some responses that say "I
(was/was not) able to reproduce the bug." If other people can
reproduce the bug, this is good and it will probably get resolved
quickly. If the bug isn't reproducible, it may be awhile before it is
cause is tracked down.

If the bug cannot be reproduced from the instructions provided, a
deveoper will usually leave it in "feedback", with a bugnote asking
for more information. This is a request for you to add more details or
answer questions from the developer. If we don't hear from you within
a reasonable time period, we will move the bug to "resolved", where it
will remain until (and if) you do.